Robel Woldu Built One of Seattle's HYROX Floors

Seattle Fitness Magazine · 1 Oct 2026

• 3class formats
• 5vancouver contract years

Robel Woldu runs one of Seattle's HYROX floors

Robel Woldu founded Athletic Form in 2013.

The gym he built now holds one of Seattle's HYROX training floors, in a city that has never hosted the race itself. One regional outlet, SEAtoday, has reported Seattle as one of the largest U.S. cities HYROX has skipped, even while calling the sport a fitness movement sweeping the Pacific Northwest.

Woldu's gym, on 1st Avenue South in SoDo, runs three class formats built on that race's own shape: Skill, Strength, Team. None of them is a race. They're the only rehearsal most people training here will get.

A mother's illness started the gym

Woldu traces it to his mother's illness.

"My mother fought hypothyroidism disease most of her life, which is what sparked my interest in health and wellness," he has said. That habit grew.

"What started out as a way to stay healthy and fit, turned into an obsession to help my family, and on a larger scale, the community," he says. He opened the gym in 2013, first out of a space in Cal Anderson, before moving it to SoDo, where it has operated since.

Even out the playing field

Woldu describes himself as a first-generation Eritrean man and a father.

His mission statement grows from that. "As long as I am breathing, my mission will be to even out the playing field," he says on Athletic Form's site.

The line credited to Muhammad Ali reads: "Service is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth." It runs from his mother's diagnosis to the floor he eventually built in SoDo. Woldu holds the title of founder and lead trainer at Athletic Form.

A SoDo floor built for one sport

Athletic Form sits at 2944 1st Ave S in SoDo, though some directories list the address one storefront over, at 2946.

The gym's own site puts the floor at 10,000 square feet; the guide Intentionalist puts it closer to 9,000. Woldu built it around that race's own movements: sled pushes and pulls, rowing, wall balls, farmer's carries. The gym splits those into three formats, Skill, Strength and Team, instead of running them as a single open class.

The team format requires sign-up in advance and is built around high-intensity endurance objectives in a friendly, competitive format, deliberately leaving out complex barbell work or Olympic lifts in favor of movements closer to the race's own stations. None of it is a race. It's a rehearsal for a race this city has never hosted.

Vancouver won the race Seattle wanted

Seattle lost its shot at an official HYROX race.

Vancouver, B.C. got it instead. Vancouver Magazine reports organizers there signed a five-year contract after the city won a bid against both Seattle and Calgary. Rich Poole, co-owner of the Vancouver gym Kin Culture, has said the only slot available was the week before Christmas.

Vancouver's race now runs every year around December 20, locked there by that same contract and by the sport's World Cup scheduling. Seattle bid and lost.

No race date, just a floor in SoDo

Until Seattle wins a bid of its own, the sport has no race date here.

Only a floor. Woldu opened that floor in 2013. His mother was sick. The same hosting bids go to the biggest contracts and the most convenient December dates. That is its own kind of uneven field, the sort Woldu built his mission statement to answer.

More than a decade later, his floor in SoDo is the closest thing this city has to a home for a race it has never been allowed to host.